Group Work Best Practices Guide

Group work in online courses can facilitate student learning in unique ways. In particular, group assignments can provide students with opportunities to engage in authentic tasks and develop collaborative skills applicable to their future careers. Williams, Duray, and Reddy (2006) argue that team learning stimulates student thinking at the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, including application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Group projects can serve a variety of different purposes across a wide range of academic programs and subjects. Additionally, group projects can foster interaction and community building amongst students, which can be especially valuable in an asynchronous online classroom (Martin & Bolliger, 2018).

Group projects can be a valuable part of graduate coursework, but in order for students (and instructors) to benefit from these assignments, they need to be strategically designed and implemented. Students and instructors may struggle if expectations for group assignments are unclear or students do not have sufficient time to arrange meetings with their classmates. In addition, some assignments may be better suited for individual completion.

Instructors can mitigate student issues with clear planning in the course design phase. When designing a group activity, consider the following logistical questions:

• How much time will students need to complete the project?
• How will groups be formed?
• How many students will be assigned to each group?
• How will students be expected to organize and interact with other group members?
• How will students be supported and evaluated on the project?
• Will students evaluate their team members’ contributions and participation at any point in the process?

These questions should inform the design of the group activity and help you identify any information that will need to be communicated to students.

• When writing instructions for group assignments, it is important to establish your expectations for student collaboration and indicate whether students will be graded as a group or individually. If you don't already use a rubric for group work assignments, you might consider creating one to increase grading transparency.
• You should also consider how to facilitate collaboration among students throughout the life cycle of the project. One way to assist students with the collaboration process is to suggest technologies that students can use to collaborate, such as Google Docs or Zoom. Another way is to suggest or assign specific roles for students, such as team leader, team communicator, and team editor. Assigning student roles can help eliminate ambiguity and facilitate communication within a group. Asking each group to complete a team contract early in the process can be a valuable experience, as groups can work together to determine team roles, schedule meetings or check-ins, and set expectations.
• Prepare students for group work by alerting them to any group assignments early in the course, and reiterate your expectations on course pages. If the group assignment in question is a large or summative project, it can be helpful to provide reminders and tips at the beginning of each module.
• Consider building checkpoints into large group assignments to ensure that students are working on the assignment over the course of the term and not saving everything for the last minute. Checkpoints can be formal assignments that the group must submit for grading, or they can be reminders or milestones that instructors provide throughout the course (Milman, 2015).
• It is often beneficial for the entire class to view the final deliverables of a group project, such as a recorded presentation. One way to accomplish this goal is to create a class discussion board where students can post their assignments. You might prompt students to have one member of their group post their final deliverable in the discussion board. Then, encourage students to review other groups’ deliverables and provide feedback. This kind of activity can encourage deeper and more diverse interactions with the topics of the course.

• Thoughtfully determine the appropriate grading settings based on the nature of the group assignment. Group assignment settings in Canvas allow instructors to grade students as a group or individually. One benefit of group grading is efficiency, as the instructor only needs to submit one grade for each group. One benefit of individual grading is the ability to modify individual students' grades based on their contributions. This can become necessary when, for example, a group lets you know that one or more team members did not contribute to the final deliverable.
• In order to underscore the importance of collaboration, “...grades for group projects should not be based solely on the final product but should incorporate success with the research and writing process. For example, in asynchronous online courses teachers often give a separate grade for engagement in order to reward students who participate fully in the course” (Lowes, 2014, emphasis ours).
• If there is a chance a different instructor will teach your course in the future, leave instructions to help them effectively facilitate group work. This might include guidance on when groups need to be assigned, the maximum number of students you recommend per group, how group grades ought to be assigned, and how students will be assigned to groups (randomly, criteria based, via self sign-up, etc.).

Lowes, S. (2014). How much “group” is there in online group work? Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, (18)1, 133-146.

Martin, F., & Bolliger, D. U. (2018). Engagement matters: Student perceptions on the importance of engagement strategies in the online learning environment. Online Learning, 22(1), 205-222.

Milman, N. B. (2015). Navigating online virtual group work: Tips for instructors and students. Distance Learning, 12(4), 51-54.

Williams, E. A., Duray, R., & Reddy, V. (2006). Teamwork orientation, group cohesiveness, and student learning: A study of the use of teams in online distance education. Journal of Management Education, 30(4), 592-616.